To build a producer owned cotton textile industry is an ambitious endeavour. Is it possible, and is it a viable option in the future for the making of cotton cloth in this country?
The world is moving towards equity and equality, necessary ingredients of true democracy. People working at the lower levels of mainstream employment will no longer accept the hierarchic model of corporate working, as witnessed in the recent savage conflicts between 'workers' and 'management' at the Maruti & Bajaj plants. A conflict that destroyed the textile industry of Bombay a generation ago. The world is now also soberly reckoning up the cost, to the environment and to society, of high-energy technologies that had their origins in the Industrial Revolution 2 hundred years ago.
An examination into the history of cotton textile technology shows that we use textile machinery that was devised in the 19th century, and devised by people who had no clear knowledge of the properties of the cotton fibre.. sponsored by the merchant class whose only interest was the profitability of the machinery, basically its speed of operation, not its ecological or social cost, nor the quality of the end-product.. And there began the long the long and ultimately tragic history of replacing Indian cotton plant varieties, G Arboreum & Herbaceum, with the American strain, G Hirsutum, entirely unsuited to Indian agricultural practices.
Perhaps the time has come for that producer owned, economically and ecologically viable cotton textile industry?
The world is moving towards equity and equality, necessary ingredients of true democracy. People working at the lower levels of mainstream employment will no longer accept the hierarchic model of corporate working, as witnessed in the recent savage conflicts between 'workers' and 'management' at the Maruti & Bajaj plants. A conflict that destroyed the textile industry of Bombay a generation ago. The world is now also soberly reckoning up the cost, to the environment and to society, of high-energy technologies that had their origins in the Industrial Revolution 2 hundred years ago.
An examination into the history of cotton textile technology shows that we use textile machinery that was devised in the 19th century, and devised by people who had no clear knowledge of the properties of the cotton fibre.. sponsored by the merchant class whose only interest was the profitability of the machinery, basically its speed of operation, not its ecological or social cost, nor the quality of the end-product.. And there began the long the long and ultimately tragic history of replacing Indian cotton plant varieties, G Arboreum & Herbaceum, with the American strain, G Hirsutum, entirely unsuited to Indian agricultural practices.
Perhaps the time has come for that producer owned, economically and ecologically viable cotton textile industry?
